The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

[Logical]

“It was kind of unbelievable that it was real data,” said Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian. “We were scratching our heads. For any idea that came up there was always something that would argue against it.”

She was talking to the New Scientist about KIC 8462852, a distant star with a very unusual flickering habit. Something was making the star dim drastically every few years, and she wasn’t sure what.

Boyajian wrote up a paper on possible explanations for the star’s bizarre behavior, and it was published recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. But she also sent her data to fellow astronomer Jason Wright, a Penn State University researcher who helped developed a protocol for seeking signs of unearthly civilization, wondering what he would make of it.

To Wright, it looked like the kind of star he and his colleagues had been waiting for. If none of the ordinary reasons for the star’s flux quite seemed to fit, perhaps an extraordinary one was in order.

Aliens.

-----------------------------------

More at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/15/the-strange-star-that-has-serious-scientists-talking-about-an-alien-megastructure/

[Rex]

1. Maybe we finally found something besides mother nature?

It will be interesting to see what comes from this as technology advances.

[Logical]

3. I agree, a long shot but still interesting! nt

[Art_from_Ark]

23. It's a Klingon battleship

I just know it is.

[Rex]

25. That's fine, I'll take the Klingons over the Ferengi any day.

Could be worse, could turn out to be a borg home world!

[katsy]

26. Yet all an improvement

over the gop

[Rex]

29. True and no need to hide here, we all agree on that on DU.

It is like an unwritten rule that everyone knows the GOP is worst group of lifeforms in the known galaxy.

[Angry Dragon]

2. I just hope they are not republicans

[Basic LA]

5. Haha!

Good one.

[LongTomH]

13. Scientists are looking for signs of INTELLIGENT life!!!!!

[Fumesucker]

4. It's an F3 main sequence star about three times as luminous as the Sun

Which means it has a considerably shorter lifespan than Sol, the brighter stars are the shorter lived they are.

That means any aliens there either came from somewhere else or evolved intelligence a good bit faster than we have.

Interestingly for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere the star is almost directly overhead at sunset this time of year.

[longship]

6. OBAFGKM

From hottest, most massive, shortest lived to coolest, least massive, longest lived.

The stellar classes of main sequence (ordinary) stars are:
OBAFGKM, with 0-9 sub-classes, 0 being the hottest, down to 9.

Sol (the Sun) is a G3, for comparison.
Stellar classifications

So as Fumesucker indicates, this star is a whole class hotter, more massive, shorter lived than Sol.

[backscatter712]

8. You know you've been playing Elite:Dangerous...

...when you remember the above star classes as "KGB FOAM". OK, I get them out of order this way, but this is how I remember which classes of stars I can surf with the fuel scoop to refuel.

Good to remember - you probably don't want to try to scoop fuel from a neutron star...

[longship]

9. It had better be a fucking robust scoop.

Because even a teaspoonful...

As Mr. Spock might say, "this material is likely pure neutronium. It is unlikely that any phaser would disrupt its structure."

[backscatter712]

21. Oh you're not kidding.

Even if you had transporter technology from the Enterprise, if you beamed a teaspoonful of neutronium onboard your ship, if it wasn't contained somehow, say inside the warp core, it would immediately explode like a few zillion nuclear bombs.

And then you've got some hazards like spaghettification, intense radiation, magnetic fields so strong they'll rip you to atoms and scramble your credit cards.

Oh, and the entire neutron star, with the mass of an entire star, crammed into a space the size of Manhattan, is spinning as fast as a kitchen blender.

[Rex]

30. You can never play too much Elite:Dangerous!

But grinding for the python and then the anaconda can get a little bit tedious.

[Humanist_Activist]

7. There's no reason to suggest that any aliens there evolved in that solar system...

they could be, for lack of a better word, emigrated to a previously unoccupied system.

[Fumesucker]

22. That's what I meant by "came from somewhere else"

I kind of suspect that any civilization creating structures that size has moved beyond the merely biological anyway, sacks of impure water are so fragile and impermanent and require ridiculously stringent environmental standards lest they involuntarily expire.

Fun to talk about but more than likely there is some entirely reasonable explanation that does not involve sentient aliens building Ringworld-sized objects.

[Humanist_Activist]

27. True, its fun speculation though, I'm thinking dyson swarm. n/t

[Marr]

10. Ring World! /nt

[ladjf]

11. I think it is close to ridiculous to start speculating that the occasional

fluctuation is possibly due to alien causes. Unless there are other examples of unexplained changes, this dilemma needs to be studied by physicists.

[Logical]

12. Lighten up, the article even said it was a long shot. It was one possibility. nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. +1 n/t

[Rex]

31. The people talking about it and doing the speculation are physicists.

Astrophysicists. So maybe they know of what they speak about, far better than any of us.

[LongTomH]

14. Astronomer Phil Plait has also commented on this. Of Ccourse, he's skeptical; but.......

On Phil's Bad Astronomy page: Did Astronomers Find Evidence of an Alien Civilization?

A paper by a team of astronomers is getting some notice because of aliens.

Now let’s have a care here. The paper doesn’t mention aliens, and it doesn’t even imply aliens. Not directly, at least. But the astronomers found a star so odd, with behavior so difficult to explain, that it’s clear something weird is happening there. And some of the astronomers who did the work are now looking into the idea that what they’ve found might (might!) be due to aliens.

But don’t let this idea run away with you (as it has with some folks on social media and, no doubt, will in some sketchier “media” outlets any minute now). The scientists involved are being very skeptical and approaching this the right way: more of an interested “Hey, why not?” follow-up, as opposed to the Hollywood renegade astronomer who just knows it’s aliens but (fist shaking in the air) just can’t convince those uptight Big Astro sellouts!

After discussing the possibility that these 'dips' might represent an alien 'Dyson Sphere' under construction, Phil still asserts:

Look, I think it’s pretty obvious this scenario is, um, unlikely. But hey, why not? It’s easy enough to get follow-up observations of the star to check the idea out. It’s low probability but high stakes, so probably worth a shot. And it’s not exactly science fiction; Wright and a few other astronomers have submitted a paper (pending publication) to the prestigious Astrophysical Journal examining the physics of these structures and detailing how they could be detected around other stars.

As reported in the Atlantic (which is what started all the social media interest in the first place), Wright and Boyajian are indeed proposing to use a radio telescope to look for signals from the star. An alien civilization building such a structure might leak (or broadcast!) radio waves that could be detectable from 1,500 light-years away. That’s the whole basis of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (see the movie Contact, or better yet read the book, for more on this). Telescope time is controlled by a committee, and it’s not clear if the proposal will pass or not. I hope so; it shouldn’t take too much telescope time, and under modest assumptions it shouldn’t be too hard to detect a signal.

[Logical]

15. Interesting, thanks for posting!! nt

[Takket]

16. facinating! thanks for posting. will be interested to see if this star gets increased scurtiny

from the hubble maybe?

[Logical]

20. Good question. nt

[Takket]

33. Self reply... Read last night they want to point SETI at this system.

[ZX86]

18. Could it be...

A very large gas giant planet in a large orbit? Or perhaps a small black hole orbiting the star? Sounds more plausible than an intelligent civilization building an artificial structure large enough to dim a star's brightness.

[Logical]

19. I agree, so does the article, long shot but still cool. nt

[Fumesucker]

24. It's not just one item and there's no evidence of a regular orbit

Plus gas giants only get so big, Jupiter is close to the maximum diameter of a gas giant.

http://www.universetoday.com/13757/how-big-do-planets-get/

“In terms of gaseous planets, once they reach 15 Jupiter masses or so there is enough pressure in the core to ignite deuterium fusion, so those are considered “brown dwarfs” rather than planets.”

Bear in mind that due to increased gravity compressing the gases further a 15 Jupiter mass gas giant isn't 15 times the size of Jupiter, about the same size actually.

http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/8440/maximum-and-minimum-gas-giant-ice-giant-densities

With regard to density, there's a funny thing about Jupiter: It's about as big, radius-wise, as gas giants and brown dwarfs can get. Add mass to a Jupiter-sized gas giant and you get a more massive gas giant that is close to the same size as Jupiter. Add even more mass and you get a brown dwarf that is close to the same size as Jupiter. Add even more mass and you get a small red dwarf that is close to the same size as Jupiter. The mass-radius relationship is very, very flat from Jupiter-mass gas giant to smallest red dwarf.

[yuiyoshida]

28. THATS NO MOON!!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

32. Come on, am I really the first one who's going to post this?

[Takket]

34. Sorry, we dropped the ball :(

[Xyzse]

35. Seriously, it took 32 posts.

Yep, we dropped the ball.

[Omaha Steve]

36. Thanks for posting

Very good article.

K&R!

OS

[Logical]

37. Love this stuff, long shot but still so cool! nt